A recent Harvard Business Review post suggested that higher education is being disrupted by 'digital natives', including K-12 institutions that are becoming more mobile and social. The changing landscape and the explosive growth of mobile and social technologies, including massive open online courses (MOOCs) is changing the educational experience. Disruptions in education will also impact corporations. "These same trends [online courses and the flip classroom] are likely to affect corporations and the way knowledge is transferred to employees, customers, and other partners." Colleges today are serving the most mobile and social customers in the world, many of whom are using multiple mobile devices to network and collaborate. Today, social networking is the most popular use of the web. A 2012 study noted that students are choosing colleges with social media clout. A survey of 7,000 high school students revealed that university social media accounts influenced their selections.
What are the best U.S. colleges and universities doing to better promote collaboration, aimed at improving the college student experience? To answer this question, I researched US News & World Reports list of the best schools. The 2013 national university rankings identified the top 100 universities in the U.S. I then re-ranked the schools based on their combined Klout and Kred scores - a measure of their engagements across all major social platforms. Not surprisingly, the very best schools are also the most collaborative - see the table below. What does this mean to businesses today? The very best students, graduating from the very best schools, are extremely social and expect transparency and collaboration at all levels of the organization.
Business leaders must ask themselves a very simple question: how can we attract the very best talent if we are unwilling to embrace social collaboration? The answer is simple; you cannot.
The top 100 most collaborative U.S. colleges are listed below - you can click on the icons to automatically connect to their Twitter accounts.
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